


Pennsyltory

by Merlin Missy (mtgat)



Category: The Weight - The Band (Song)
Genre: Gen, POV Dead Character, Purgatory, Supernatural Elements, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/pseuds/Merlin%20Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie finds himself somewhere between Pennsylvania and Purgatory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pennsyltory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cnoocy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnoocy/gifts).



> Written as a treat for cnoocy in Yuletide 2015. I'm not sure if this is what you wanted or the exact opposite.

Charlie died four minutes after his truck left the road and hit the tree at the bottom of the steep incline. It was the longest four minutes of his life, which didn't make up for them being the last four minutes.

What did make things a little better was when he woke up again a couple of hours later.

* * *

His truck was wrecked. The wrecker couldn't back up quite to where he'd crashed. The ambulance had come and gone with his body, leaving Charlie to stand around watching as the tow rope was lowered. He'd loved that damned truck more'n he loved most anyone he'd met in his whole life.

With a sigh, he climbed the embankment alone and stood up on the asphalt all alone under the stars. He could see the patch of ice he'd hit, glinting in the flashing police car bubble light, red and blue and deadly. He weren't quite sure how he were here now. After all, he was dead. Clearly so, and laid out on a stretcher bound for the county morgue with a sheet on top. He'd watched the mess, and not a word he said to the ambulance drivers or the police or anyone made them pay a lick of attention.

He was dead, so why wasn't he getting measured for wings and a halo courtesy of St. Peter, or horns and a tail courtesy of that other place? Charlie shook his head. No answers, no nothing.

He set himself to walking back towards town. He guessed he ought to be more surprised than he was to see his old truck sitting there by the side of the road. It was just as banged up as always, no more now that it'd seen the bad side of a tree. In his ghostly pocket, Charlie felt the weight of his car keys.

"Hello, old friend," he said to the truck, rubbing his hand over the door frame. Everything prickled like electricity when he was expecting cool Detroit metal. His hand opened the door without any more problem than he ever had. He got in, and decided nothing would be lost by trying to start the motor. The truck coughed to life under him, but outside he had the feeling no one could hear the rumble of the engine.

He had a quarter tank of gas.

Charlie sat back in his old seat, feeling the busted vinyl and foam under his ass, the soft cover on the steering wheel under his hand.

He wasn't no thinking man. His brother Roy got to college and got out. Charlie never did, and never wanted to. He'd never had time for high cogitation past what he needed for the jobs he did now and then. He wasn't a bad man, never stole or got happy with his fists at the bar. He'd never hurt a woman he'd been with, and he'd only been with one man who'd left town a couple days later. He wasn't anybody special. Guess he wasn't special enough for God or the Devil to argue over him, and they'd left him be.

Couldn't get far on a quarter tank of gas, though. He shifted the truck and pulled out onto the starlit road, looking for a gas station. He'd figure out how to pay when he got there.

Charlie'd driven these winding Pennsylvania roads since he was fifteen. It was embarrassing to get taken out on one, even with an ice patch. His headlights didn't seem to work now, but he figured that was fine. He could see the road clearly in front of him, and when he passed the occasional car, he was sure he couldn't hit them if he tried.

The road sign ahead said "Nazareth 3," which was just nonsense. Nazareth was thirty miles from here. But he supposed "here" wasn't a term the dead used lightly. He'd known a girl from Nazareth, all lean legs under her cut off shorts twenty years ago. He supposed it was as good a reason as any to drop by.

* * *

The town he drove into was no Nazareth Charlie'd ever seen. The streets were wrong. The store fronts were old, like something out of the forties. He'd been to Nazareth plenty. He knew what it ought to look like.

He was tired. Charlie'd spent his day working at the factory in Reading, and he'd spent his evening dying on the side of the road.

For a while he thought this was a ghost town, some dead place for him to wander alone, but soon enough he saw lights in the windows. He pulled up to a Texaco with old-fashioned pumps. The handles didn't come off the pumps. Charlie got out. The gas station attendant nodded sleepily in his rocking chair outside the station. Inside Charlie saw lights, but the shapes they made were weird, skewed like viewing through old glass.

"I'm new in town," he said to the attendant. "I think I'm new. Can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"

The attendant woke slowly, his eyes opening like the crack of dawn. He smiled when he saw Charlie, and took his hand in a friendly shake. "No." Charlie felt the heat of the other man's hand radiating through his, the first real touch he'd had since he'd died.

"What is this place?"

"Nazareth." The attendant pointed up at the sign painted on the side of his station.

"This ain't Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and I don't think it's the Nazareth where Jesus Christ walked, either."

"You're right on both counts, son. This isn't Pennsylvania, and Christ Jesus ain't ever coming here."

Hell, then. Charlie thought, but this didn't feel like Hell. "I don't see no lakes of fire, mister."

"There's other places to go besides that. You'll see. You'll get on."

"Can I pump some gas? I'd like to drive around and see."

"There ain't never been gas in those pumps. It's all right. You won't ever burn any, neither. The Oil Crisis is over." He tilted his head back over his chest, and after a moment, started snoring.

Charlie went back to his truck. He parked in a spot along the street. No signs saying he couldn't, and there was a light not far. Whether or not he was dead, no matter where he was, he couldn't be sure his truck wouldn't get stolen, and then where would he be? Some ghost with no truck, that's where.

* * *

Charlie had spent plenty of nights camping out, even on a cold night like this one, and it wasn't as if he had to worry abut freezing to death. He just needed a nice place to lay his head and think about what was going on. Maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe he was in the hospital, the big one over by Allentown, laying there in a coma like someone from the television. Maybe this was the weirdest dream he'd ever had.

He just needed to get his head down.

He saw the two of them walking along the sidewalk as he wandered looking for a comfortable spot. The couple were laughing it up, her head on his shoulder, his wrapped around her with his hand in her jeans pocket. She wore a pretty crop top and her hair tied up in a bandanna. He wore old leather and cowboy boots.

"We're going places, Carmen," the man said, and his laugh shot out into the quiet street, sounding drunk, but maybe not as drunk as his girlfriend. Charlie had seen this all before, seen the girls led off by men a little more sober than they let on, and after, whose word was against whose?

Just because he was dead didn't mean Charlie couldn't see when something wasn't right. "Hey, Carmen," he called out to her. She turned and smiled at him.

"Hello, Charlie," she said, not a trace of surprise. Did he know her? He had a sense of long, lean legs, and Carmen didn't look like a young thing any more, but a woman of forty years at least staring into him. Her man glared at Charlie, and his face said everything Charlie already knew about his plans for tonight.

"Why don't you show me downtown? I need a place to stay."

"I can't. I've got to travel on now. But my friend can stay."

She disengaged her arms from the Devil, and she turned. She was gone before she reached the end of the street.

The Devil stared down Charlie until Charlie looked away. "You know why you're here, boy?"

"No." He weren't gonna call the Devil "sir."

"You best find out real quick."

* * *

There was a park near the center of town, and Charlie wasn't the only one stopping there. An old man had pitched a tent by the brook running through the commons. He sat outside on a camp chair, singing hymns under his breath.

Inside the tent, Charlie saw a young girl peeking her head out.

"My granddaughter," said Luke. "We've been here since the fire."

Luke was good company, if you didn't mind the singing. He was all Praise Jesus This and My Lord Redeemeth That, which seemed to be a joke, considering. But Charlie didn't care. Anna Lee giggled at the magic tricks Charlie could remember, and she danced on the grass in her bare feet, dark hair spilling down her back.

"I heard the Christ Jesus never comes here," Charlie said to Luke as they sat by the brook. "And I met the Devil last night." He hadn't slept since, although he was tired as sin. Something about the way he'd spoken to the Devil himself drove away all hope of sleep.

Luke spat, his sputum landing with a bubbly mess atop the water before the current ripped it away. "Don't let them tell you that, son. The Devil'd keep us all here forever if'n we believed his lies."

"But what happens if you're right and the Lord comes and takes you away? What about young Anna Lee?"

"I guess you'll have to stay here and keep her company."

* * *

Miss Moses had been there the longest. Charlie wasn't sure how he knew, but he felt it in his bones. She kept an eye out for the children. Not a lot of children passed through Nazareth, which was a blessing. This was no place for kids. This was no place for nobody.

"They find me, or I find them," she said, sitting on her porch. She was a knitter, vast piles of yarn to one side of her, and a pile of warm sweaters, socks, caps, and blankets to the other side. Inside her rambling home, feet scampered and voices laughed. None of them lasted long before fading away into the ever-present fog.

"Why are they here?"

"Same reason you are." Her thick fingers held the needles like some maestro in front of a band, swooping into easy patterns faster than you could think.

"Why'm I here?"

"Because you're lost, son."

"Am I waiting to be saved?"

"No, you're waiting to see if Miss Fanny will keep you or set you loose to free yourself." Inches of newly-knitted sock flowed off her needles.

"Tell me about Miss Fanny."

"Never met Fanny myself. I'm fine right here, and here I'm gonna stay."

* * *

Charlie's truck stayed where he parked it. There wasn't proper day here, not with a sun and sky, but it was lighter out, and he didn't need the lamp to see his truck had rusted out over night, gone derelict like some abandoned Mustang in a forgotten back yard.

He placed his hand on the side like a lover. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be gone so long."

A man came up to him out of the fog. Charlie looked him up and down, expecting the Devil again. The man pushed him up against the truck. Charlie felt the heat of the man's body, smelled the foul old cigarette stink of his breath.

"I know you!" cried the man. "I know you!"

Charlie tried to remember, but he'd been dead for a day. Somewhere, his brain was probably turning to mush while they waited to bury him beside his mom. "Chester?"

"Yeah hey, Charlie," said Chester, who'd worked in the factory in Allentown before he fell dead one day at work. Charlie remembered how his face had contorted up, all red.

"I didn't think I'd find you here."

A black dog came out of the fog. Charlie pushed back against the truck a little harder. He didn't like big dogs, not ever since one bit him when he was six. But this one was a big floppy dog, part Labrador, part tongue. He sat down on the street and began scratching himself.

"Truck broke?" Chester asked, staring at Charlie's poor vehicle.

"I think so."

"I'll fix it for you. Then you can drive out of here."

"I didn't think I could drive out of here."

Chester shrugged. "Anybody can leave. You got wheels. Take Jack with you." Hearing his name, the dog came over to Chester and licked his hand. "He's a good cuss."

"Is he your dog?"

"I don't figure he's anyone's dog. I think he's really real. He needs food, and sunshine. Take him with you when you go, and I'll fix up your truck."

"I need to find Miss Fanny first. Then I'll be okay."

* * *

Her house was in the center of town, not far from the park where he'd slept, where Luke ranted and Anna Lee ran over the ghostly grass. He'd passed it in the night and never known.

Charlie knocked on the door. His knapsack was heavy.

The Devil answered the door. "Oh, it's you."

"I'm here to see Miss Fanny."

"She's not taking visitors today." The Devil looked him up and down. "Unless you were inclined to do me a favor or two."

Charlie said, "I suppose I'm too old to get caught up in thinking doing you a favor would do me any good at all."

"We could have fun together, you and I." The Devil leaned in close, smelling of his old leathers and his latest promises. "This is a town for bargaining." He set one icy cold hand on Charlie's arm, sending a shiver up his spine and down to his groin.

Charlie thought about the man he'd loved for a night, and the taste of cheap whiskey and the feel of a heartbeat under his ear. "He was a lot better looking than you, Old Scratch. I should have kept his phone number. Where's Miss Fanny?"

"Up the stairs." The Devil stepped aside.

Miss Fanny kept court in the biggest bedroom Charlie'd ever seen. Her hair was done up in ringlets, and her face was made up like a caricature of a whore: all ruby red lips and dots of rouge on her cheeks under great blue eye-shadow and mascara like beetles on her face. She lay in an enormous bed, three times the one King size bed he remembered, all covered in frilly blankets and lacy trims hanging over the four posters. The carpet was a wine red, and the wallpaper hung with flowers that looked like pink faces.

Charlie stepped into the room.

"Hello, Charlie."

"Ma'am."

"How are you finding your stay in town?"

He looked around the room. "I'm finding it fine. This room isn't really real, is it?"

"Does that matter?"

"I think it does. What is this place really? I'm dead. I remember dying. I don't think this is Heaven. The Devil's downstairs but it don't feel like Hell, neither. There's a place in the middle they used to say the unbaptized babies all went, but there's no babies here. There's just ghosts."

"Charlie, are you trying to philosophize?"

"No, ma'am. I'm trying to figure out what map this Nazareth would be on, because it sure isn't Pennsylvania."

"There are more places than Heaven and Earth and Pennsylvania than you can dream, boy."

He stepped closer to the bed. "Why am I here?"

"Because you drove here. You came into my town willingly. You spoke to my people of your own accord."

"Can I leave?"

"If you want. You can stay. Many choose to stay. Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't enjoy the finer qualities of Pennsylvania Dutch Country." She stretched out a hand, and a pitcher of apple cider solidified on the table beside her. She poured two glasses. "You haven't eaten. You must be starving."

He remembered something like this. Eat the fruit and know. Eat the seeds and stay. Here it would be drink the juice and fall asleep forever against Fanny's bosom. "I reckon I'm not thirsty."

She was the Queen here. Whatever this place was, in-between all worlds, this was her kingdom. The Devil did her bidding here, and the Christ only came to those who brought Him in with them.

"What happens if I leave?"

"Only you know."

"Can I see your real face?"

"I don't know. Can you?"

Charlie squinted, peering into the gloom of the giant room, past the blood red carpet and the paint on her face. Like one of those funny pictures, the ones that have a vase that's two people about to kiss, the frills and lace and whore make-up tilted from what he expected to see into something else.

She was small, almost the size of a child, her face youthful despite the age around her. She'd worn the room like a mask. The little goddess grinned at him. "Not bad. Most people never see me at all."

"Good-bye, Miss Fanny."

"Give my regards to whoever you meet out there."

* * *

The truck was ready when he reached the place where he'd parked. Jack the dog sat in the street, doggy tail wagging, doggy tongue lolling.

"You want a ride, boy?"

Jack barked and jumped into the cab. Charlie slid inside. Same old truck. Same old smells of vinyl and motor oil. He flipped on the radio and caught a song he hadn't heard in years coming out of the radio station from Bethlehem.

The truck purred to life as he turned the key, and showed a full tank of gas. Maybe it was a gift from Chester, or from Fanny. Maybe it meant he could go anywhere now.

He pulled away from the curb, into the fog, heading out of town the way he'd gone in. He passed the park. Luke was gone. Anna Lee played alone on the grass. Charlie rolled down the window.

"Anna Lee, you ready?"

She glanced around, a little unsure about getting into a truck with a strange man. But he figured she figured everything was strange when you were a little dead. "Okay." She climbed in beside Jack and petted him as he wagged his tail.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I don't know. You want me to drop you off with Miss Moses, or you want to come along?"

She stayed silent as he drove. As they passed the Texaco, she said, "I want to see what's next."

"Me, too."

He turned on his blinker and made the left, and he drove out of town. When they reached the city limit, Anna Lee took a breath. Charlie took one too. Then he eased the truck out onto the two-lane highway just as the sun poked through the fog and turned the world around them into winter blues and dying fall greens and the faded gray asphalt of the road rolling out before them forever.

* * *


End file.
